I can never forget the lessons I learned from my father during his 22-year battle with Parkinson's disease. First diagnosed at age 50, I watched him as the disease progressed from noticeable tremors to complete helplessness. Despite the debilitating effects the disease had upon his body, he never complained. No matter how much pain he was in, he always focused the attention on my family and me whenever I saw him.

Not one to show outward emotion (I don't recall I ever saw him cry), he finally started to open up during the last couple of years of his life. It was during one of my hospital visits that he caught me off-guard and turned the attention to himself.

He asked me if I felt he were a good father and grandfather. When I replied, "Why do you ask?," he told me he felt he let the family down. He explained that he possessed an inner guilt that so many of the family's resources had to be used to keep his disease under control. Because of this and the years of lost income, he felt he had not been able to provide his wife, children and grandchildren with the standard of living that he had hoped.

I quickly pointed out that no one could blame him for contracting Parkinson's disease. No one could have ever anticipated that coming. His father regularly played golf into his 70s and my father was never sick a day in his life until the Parkinson's.

My father stopped me in mid-sentence and offered, "In many ways, I wish that I would have died years ago and spared my family the pain and expense of watching me die. I left this family totally vulnerable to the unexpected out of my own choice. I had the opportunity and the means to do something but did nothing instead. I tell you this because I don't want you to make the same mistake I made."

I have long since heeded my father's advice. Yet today, millions of people leave their families, their business and their employees at risk by not acquiring disability insurance.

You probably take plenty of precautions in your daily life. You wear a seat belt, you childproof your home, and you have a working smoke detector. Still, no matter how prepared you are, accidents and illness do happen. A sports injury, a car accident, a problem pregnancy, a serious back injury, a heart attack or stroke -- any of these situations can result in your not being able to work at your usual job for extended periods of time. That in turn means a loss of income, which could put all of your other assets at risk.

When you consider the possibility of becoming disabled, ask yourself these important questions:

-- Could you afford to live without your income?

-- If your spouse works, how long would your family realistically be able to rely on only one income?

-- Exactly how long would your savings hold out?

-- What would you and your family have to give up to keep going?

Private schooling or college funding for the children, club memberships, season tickets to sporting events, vacations, dining out -- these are just a few of the non-essential items that people with disabilities are faced with losing every day. But what about essential costs of living such as your mortgage and your retirement? The number one cause of mortgage foreclosure (46%) is disability -- not unemployment, not death. The years of lost income can have a devastating effect on one's retirement income as well.

As you can see, long term disabilities impact not only the individual, but family members and business associates as well. Take this time to protect your ability to earn an income so that you do not leave yourself, your family or your associates vulnerable to the effects of an accident or long term illness. An ounce of precaution is worth a pound of cure!